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Same here, in fact, I’ve had to try donating much of my food to local churches and charities instead of actually keeping it for the storm, which didn’t really knock out power in my part of Delaware at all. The flooding though, a problem. But given the fireplace, myself and my wife could survive over a week without power, plus we’ve got plenty of books, and little tweaking aspects of the house to pass the time, plus, we could actually, given the food, toilet paper, etc., in reserve, we could also support four additional people. I know what you’re saying however, it seems all too many people don’t seem to know what life without power is.

We are in Ohio, so all we had to deal with was the power being out from Tuesday night until last night.

But we have a modest travel trailer, so we bought a little generator that was on sale at Aldi, for less than $150. That’s less than a year of the cable bill we don’t have.

So while all our neighbors were huddled in darkness or visiting relatives, I built a cord with plugs on both ends, disconnected the mains so as not to backfeed the grid, and ran an extension cord to one of the circuits in the house and backfed the breaker panel. We used about 8 gallons of gas (less than $30) and had the furnace, fridge, freezer, TV, Internet and plenty of lights running. My wife even ran the dishwasher once.

We certainly couldn’t run like that indefinitely, but winter’s coming and it only takes one ice storm or blizzard to accomplish the same result. The power goes out just about everywhere once or twice a year. One doesn’t have to spend a fortune or build a bunker to be able to outlast something you should be expecting as a matter of course.

I look around in amusement at people who have to have the latest smartphone, or a game console, or satellite TV, or every possible cable channel - all of which cost more than the little generator that kept us in comfort for the duration of this event.